The £55 billion HS2 railway could eventually see trains whizzing between cities at up to 250mph.

And yet the form of transport the project resembles is not so much a bullet train but an oil supertanker – slow and cumbersome, but extremely difficult to stop or turn around.

HS2 was first proposed almost a decade ago under the last Labour government, but the length of track laid is still standing at precisely zero miles.

By way of comparison, over a similar time span China has opened around 12,000 miles of high speed rail. (Of course, infrastructure mega-projects tend to be easier if you don’t have to worry about pesky inconveniences like individual property rights...)

And yet the HS2 juggernaut still thunders on – while there are still campaigners and politicians calling for the whole thing to be scrapped, it seems clear that we are now past the point of no return.

Read More

So like Doc and Marty in Back to Future Part 3, we are now trapped on a runaway train, hurtling towards an unbuilt bridge, unable to stop no matter what facts, logic or commonsense might be telling us.

The latest station stop on this journey (okay, no more transport metaphors, I promise) was this week’s second reading of the bill to authorise the construction of HS2 phase 2a between Lichfield and Crewe.

Stop HS2 posters lining the roadside on the way to Whitmore

This would involve constructing around 30 miles of track across the Staffordshire countryside, complete with bridges, tunnels and embankments, but bypassing the county’s only major urban centre.

So needless to say, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent MPs featured heavily in the Commons debate on the bill. And there was a diverse array of opinions on offer, ranging from the outright opposition of Sir Bill Cash, to the enthusiastic support (albeit with caveats) of Jack Brereton. Sir Bill is used to swimming against the tide within his own party, and his antipathy towards HS2 is understandable given that the line will cut straight through his Stone constituency, ‘from top to bottom’ as he put it.

But beyond Sir Bill’s concerns over the project’s local environmental impact, he expressed doubt whether there would even be any economic gains to make up for this damage.

Opponents of HS2 have argued that high speed rail is actually a technology of the past, and that by the time the railway is actually built it will have been made obsolete by more futuristic forms of transport.

And even if HS2 does bring economic benefits, it remains unclear whether they will be felt in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire.

Video Loading

Video Unavailable

Click to playTap to play

The video will start in 8Cancel

Play now

For the time being, suggestions that Stoke station could be served by one high speed train an hour (which is hardly game-changing) remain just that: suggestions.

And yet despite the concerns over HS2 raised by Sir Bill and others, there will be no stopping the project – only 12 MPs voted against the phase 2a bill. But it’s fair to say that not everybody is on board.